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VOLUME 17 PAPER 04 AUTHORS Multisensory materialities Unruly principles: First year Debi Banerjee in the art school experimental pedagogy, Glasgow Kirsty Hendry School of Art 1965-1975 Unruly principles: First year experimental pedagogy, Glasgow School of Art 1965-1975 Volume 17 Paper 04
ABSTRACT KEY WORDS Unknown Outcomes was a series of participatory workshops, understanding how this experience may be deconstructed, Pedagogy, Glasgow School of first presented as part of the Material Culture in Action transposed, and communicated via other sensorial Art, workshops, Ted Odling Conference (2015) and were formulated in response to registers. This paper reflects on our restaging of Odling’s archival research into the experimental practices emerging teaching ideas and principles in the form of the Unknown from Ted Odling’s Section V of First Year Studies at Glasgow Outcomes workshops to explore how the materiality of School of Art (1965-mid 1970s). The historical Section V the archive can be used as a critical tool, a catalyst, and a challenged GSA’s own position on what a creative education point of departure from which to develop generative critical might necessitate, critiquing the institutionalised teaching positions that relate to current educational contexts. We norms of its time. Section V encouraged first year students ask how might Odling’s practice—through the archive— be to question fundamental assumptions about making given new material potency for current students to explore by challenging the faculties of perception as a means of and identify the pedagogical norms rooted within their own learning contexts?
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ARCHIVE AS APPARATUS
Unknown Outcomes began in September 2015 with the staging of the Section V Visual Perception Workshop 1 – Please follow marked hyperlinks in at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Glasgow.1 the text for the online dissemination Initially instigated as one of the multiple outputs from of material via GSA the archival research project New Wave: Materials, Methods and Media, Glasgow School of Art 1970- 2 – The New Wave: Materials, Method 1986,2 our workshop was developed in response to the and Media 1970-1986 research project experimental practices emerging from Ted Odling’s ran from October 2014-September 2015 and culminated in an exhibition, Section V of First Year Studies at Glasgow School workshop, and a series of podcasts of Art (GSA) from 1965 to the mid-1970s—practices (see Banerjee, 2015). which in themselves have long been superseded but were rediscovered during the New Wave research. This workshop precipitated a series of collaborative endeavours with the archival material which, at the time of writing, includes a series of further participatory workshops, articles, and texts. Unknown Outcomes evolved out of necessity in response to the requirements of the archival material itself—because Through our reinterpretation, the workshops Figure 1: Unknown Outcomes, pure archival research, even when supplemented by became active sites in which archival content and website screenshot, 2017 anecdotal recollections of past students—did not really current perspectives were drawn into close proximity. capture the embodied nature of those experimental The workshops became a performative meeting point and experiential approaches to learning and teaching for binary terms; education ‘now’ became inflected by of the period. education ‘then’; the recollections of past participants We begin by tracing the origins and historical met the reflections of contemporary participants; and context of the 2015 New Wave project and the role that the bureaucratic record was reconciled with it’s Section V played within this research—highlighting anecdotal counterpart. The workshops offered us the various absences that this initial survey revealed specific instances from which to explore these seem- and the interviews that were conducted to reconcile ingly opposing positions, a temporal disjuncture that these omissions. We will reflect on how the generative serves as the narrative arc of this paper. qualities of these interviews then led to further expl- This paper maps the various voices that have oration, namely our reinterpreting some of Odling’s emerged throughout the project onto wider discourse original exercises and teaching in the form of the surrounding pedagogical strategies within Art and Unknown Outcomes project. Design education. We shall trace the adoption of anecdote as research strategy and methodology,
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3 – Throughout the course of this drawing parallels between the anecdote3 and work- and a sense of the individuals on the teaching and paper we will be drawing upon shop as active spaces of becoming present. Whilst administrative staff, it lacked information about Mike Michael’s interpretation as characterised in ‘Anecdote’ as a form the role of anecdote is critical to much of the New personal experiences (staff and students), or of of ‘auto-ethnography’ that explicitly Wave project, it is within the staging of our Unknown the teaching and course content. I recognised the encapsulates the ‘performativity of Outcomes workshops that we are offered a position ‘historical silences’ described by New York archivist research’ (Michael, 2014, p. 26) from which to reflect on its multifaceted qualities— Ben Alexander in this apparently compendious not only as a resource for recouping lost accounts, but collection of papers (Alexander, 2006, p.3). In order vitally, as a vehicle for the production and distribution to fill these ‘historical silences’ (ibid.) an alternative of knowledge. informal archive that supplemented the existing information had to be constructed, one that captured the private reflections and personal accounts of staff NEW WAVE: MATERIALS, METHODS AND MEDIA, that developed these new pedagogical structures and GLASGOW SCHOOL OF ART 1970-1986 the students who experienced them. As Hal Foster notes in his essay An Archival Impulse, archival The project New Wave: Materials, Methods and Media, practice ‘not only draws on informal archives but Glasgow School of Art 1970-1986 was based at GSA’s produces them as well, and does so in a way that institutional archive, which provides a comprehensive underscores the nature of all archival material as found record of the school’s activities over the last 167 years. yet constructed, factual yet fictive, public yet private’ As Research Assistant for the project, I (Debi Banerjee) (Foster, 2004, p.4) set out to examine thirty-five boxes of uncatalogued Archives are fragmentary and specific in their 4 – The Fine Art School was papers dating from 1977,4 when the Fine Art School nature. Whilst much could be inferred from the established in 1977 signalling a shift from awarding Diplomas was first established as a distinct academic area within existing GSA archive, forming a clear picture of this to conferring Degrees—the last GSA. I was specifically looking for material relating to period of the institution’s history was problematic. Diploma was awarded at GSA in the development of an increasingly multidisciplinary There was also the additional issue of the arbitrary 1978. This was in part due to the visits and recommendations made curriculum in Fine Art—seeking to reveal the academic periodisation of the source material to contend with. by CNAA (Council for National rationales advanced for the development of new Although the boxes that were under investigation date Academic Awards) to the school from courses and the theories of learning that guided their from 1977, my initial research revealed small traces of 1974 onwards. (National Council for Diplomas in Art and Design content and instructional method. evidence of pedagogical experimentation that predated merged into CNAA in 1974 and The boxes contained paper records, primarily the remit of the project. became responsible for awarding correspondence between staff; minutes from meet- degrees.) This shift took place over a much longer period of time, which ings; course proposals; and the occasional newspaper eventually lead to the new degree clipping. Looking through this vast quantity of un- I transgressed the original courses in Fine Art from 1983 onwards, ordered material was overwhelming. Whilst the namely: Fine Art Photography (1983); Environmental Art (1985) and the MFA documents obliquely introduced me to some of the parameters of the New Wave programme (1988). politics and tensions within the school and gave me an understanding of timeframes, course developments, research project.
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The research project became an exemplar of traditional character of the rest of the curriculum) and Foster’s thesis whereby I developed a new anecdotal its physical and structural separation from the rest archive to complement the existing bureaucratic of the first year sections, which were housed in the one through a series of recorded interviews with Mackintosh Building. people who had studied or taught at the school The development of the Section V programme between the 1960s and 1980s. Taking my cue from occurred amidst a broader national paradigm shift Alexander’s methodology, I allowed ‘extant archival in visual arts education initiated by the changes evidence to shape oral recollection’ so that ‘oral and suggested in the Coldstream report in 1960. The material evidence’ was ‘coordinated in ways which Coldstream report instigated a nationwide period are effectively synergistic’ (Alexander, 2006, p.3). of major upheaval in approaches to art and design The papers within the archive became probes for education, and charged institutions with producing opening up discussions with previous students and staff—our conversations were recorded in response …courses conceived as a liberal education in to these documents and images, or guided by specific art in which specialisation should be related to questions. Through these informal conversations, I one of a small number of broader areas or, put it was able to elicit insights into how the information another way, that a subject which is principally contained within the bureaucratic archive was emphasised should always be studied in a broader actively experienced and felt by those present at the context. (Strand, 1987, p.11) time, and reciprocally, how these experiences shaped and informed pedagogical developments within Following these recommendations, the National GSA. Fuelled by the potency of the informal archive Diploma in Design (NDD) was replaced from 1963 that I was constructing through these discussions, by the new Diploma in Art and Design (Dip.AD) I transgressed the original parameters of the New supplemented by foundation courses in England and Wave research project; following anecdotal utterances Wales. This was the first step towards the eventual combined with the traces in the formal archives, shift towards the three-year degree level BA course I moved further back beyond 1977 in the record of programmes in the mid 1970s. Scottish art education teaching; the Section V programme, which for the most was separate to this system and, as such, the Diploma part has been forgotten, thus came to light during the in Art continued at GSA until 1978 and was regarded New Wave project. I was intrigued by Section V after in ‘high esteem’ in Scotland (Strand, 1987, p.165).5 5 – Originally the Diploma was a four- finding a few references to it in the Directors’ Annual Unlike the general courses in Scotland, the emergence year programme comprising of a two- year general course with projects in Report from 1964 and 1965 (which notes that ‘The of foundation courses in England became ‘test beds both design and fine art, followed by Experimental Section continue[s] under the guidance for the innovation, experiment and idiosyncrasies two years of specialised study. In 1971 of Mr Odling’) and the 1970-71 prospectus which of teachers’ (Mason, 2008, p.47). Some truly radical the general course was condensed to a one year programme shows a map of the GSA campus and the location of programmes appeared, albeit only sporadically, in a the Section V building. These documents affirmed the number of different English art schools throughout course's experimental intentions (at odds with the the late 1960s and early 1970s. Such activity can
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be exemplified by the Groundcourse—a two-year a modernist European tradition and marked a cautious, foundation programme provided initially at Ealing non-committal first step in a twenty-year evolution College of Art (1961-1964) and then subsequently at of teaching at Glasgow School of Art. A key figure in Ipswich Civic College (1964-1967); and the A Course, this transition was the then Director of the school, Sir home of the infamous locked room experiment, at Harry Barnes. Barnes joined the school in 1944 and 6 – There were earlier iterations of Central St Martins (1969-1974).6 was Deputy Director from 1946-64. He recognised the groundbreaking courses such as the In comparison to these exemplars of need for change and began a process of modernisation Basic Design Course in 1954, which was heavily influenced by Bauhaus experimental teaching, Odling’s exercises and that ultimately led to GSA becoming the first Scottish principles and lead by Victor Pasmore approach cannot be considered particularly radical. art school to join the Council for National Academic and Richard Hamilton at King’s Whilst these famous experiments in teaching and Awards (CNAA) in 1978. These changes were often met College, based in Newcastle Upon Tyne, as part of the University of learning are well documented, Odling’s approach with opposition from staff and ‘a good deal of antag- Durham. offered us a level of insight into how regional7 art onism and mistrust had to be overcome’ (Strand, 1987, 7 – We use the word ‘regional’ schools across the UK were responding to the changes p.171). Section V had been developed by Ted Odling here in the most tentative of ways, precipitated by the burning fuse of the Coldstream under the guidance of Barnes based on Odling’s interest acknowledging its often pejorative connotations. We used this in report in the 1960s. The sector at this time was a in science, technology, photography, film, kinetics, reference to its use as connoting scene of gradual change dominated by two opposing music, and optics. Section V must be considered as geographic area and not as a means philosophies—as described by Catherine Mason, these progressive within the context of Glasgow School of Art to undermine the importance of an art school’s connection to, and were the ‘abstractionism, and industrial methods and and marks the institutional acknowledgement of the acknowledgement of, its relationship apparent impersonality’ of basic design ‘versus an necessity of change and experimentation. to its local cultural and socio- approach that allowed “powers of feeling to oppose economic context. Dean Kenning’s Introduction to The Art School and powers of knowing”, based on the (dominant) notion the Culture Shed (2014) by John Beck of art as romantic ideas’ (Mason, 2008, p.50). In other and Matthew Cornford offers further words, new kinds of objective technical expertise were ... new kinds of objective insight into the socio-political role of the local art school. being sought at the same time as the development of new modes of subjective expression. In the 1950s, technical expertise were being according to Mason (2008, p. 51), ‘a system devoted to conformity, to a sense of belonging, to a classical sought at the same time as the tradition and a belief that art was essentially about technical skill, gave way to a general devotion to the development of new modes of principle of individual creative development.’ As we will go on to discuss, Odling’s Section subjective expression. V is the first example of a radical departure from traditional pedagogy in Glasgow—an alternative to the rigid predominant ideologies of traditional painting, observational drawing, and sculpture. Section V presented an alternative model that looked towards
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maintained a strong connection to ‘West of Scotland’ tradition, proudly proclaiming in the School prospectus:
The painting school in Glasgow School of Art has a long and distinguished history. It had considerable influence on the artists of ‘The Glasgow School’ who in turn have influenced succeeding generations of students. It has a distinct ‘painterly’ tradition, together with respect for fine drawing. (Donaldson, 1978-1979, p.24)
But despite this conservative stance of established fine art disciplines, Harry Barnes’s fourteen-year progr- amme of institutional restructuring culminated in 1978 with the first degree awards at GSA and a new, alter- native, Mixed Media8 department under Roger Hoare. 8 – The Mixed Media department In this lineage, Section V could be understood was led by Roger Hoare from 1977- 1981 and was formed in response to as the first move towards restructuring the teaching. recommendations made by CNAA in In its original guise (1962-1964/5), the course was a 1976. A number of students from the third year specialist, but non-medium-specific, subject drawing and painting department joined Mixed Media. ‘designed to work across the traditional disciplines’, with an ‘emphasis on imagination and creativity, lots of 3D work, time related exercises and experimentation’ (Odling, 2011, p.24). The promotion of Odling when Figure 2: Ted Odling notebook, he returned from his 1965 research trip to art schools 1965 (Source: GSA Archives and SECTION V across Europe was clearly an attempt to instigate Collections). change, to expose the local context and ‘painterly Odling’s research thus came at a fluid time within tradition’ of GSA to external influences. British Art Schools. In Scotland, the earlier emphasis, The New Wave research material now holds as described by Mason (2008), of understanding art as a record of conversation with Noelle Odling9 where 9 – Noelle Odling is Ted Odling’s technical skill informed by ‘classical tradition’ was still she talked through the lecture notes, notebooks, daughter. alive and well in the mid-60s. The institutionalised correspondence, and teaching materials she had from teaching norms of GSA at the time were still inflected her father’s time at GSA. The notebook from Odling’s by an earlier nineteenth-century romantic tradition, research trip, alongside the letters written to Sir Harry synthesised with a parochial heritage. Indeed, in 1978-9 Barnes during this time, contain detailed descriptions the drawing and painting department in Glasgow still and diagrams of exercises that chart the influences he
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had absorbed during his visits, and document how he and sketches Odling kept during his trip demonstrate was beginning to marry these findings with his own the teaching approach and exercises he observed interests in systems theory and visual perception. in Europe were closely linked to the Bauhaus basic It was through these materials I was able to map the course. As explained by Daichendt, the basic course significance of this course as GSA’s first tentative at the Bauhaus was approximately six months and attempt to break from tradition and engage with a ‘divided into three topics including two and three contemporary European model of teaching visual art. dimensional instruction for the senses, emotions and Odling‘s Leverhulme-funded research trip to visit the mind’ (ibid.). After Odling returned, the projects he art schools in London, Paris, Milan, Stuttgart, Ulm, Basel designed were heavily influenced and structured on and Zurich had allowed him ‘to gain experience and these principles and involved sound, film, colour and ideas prior to setting up the new general course at GSA’ experimentation with material, at the centre of which (Odling, 2011, p.25). Following this trip, he was appointed was a deconstruction of visual and aural perception. Head of First Year by Barnes and through Section V Contemporaneous with Odling’s Section V, began to implement an experimental approach based on Edward de Bono’s Lateral Thinking and Perception this research. Whilst the other four sections of the first offers us a wider context in which to position Odling’s year general course remained unchanged, focussing on own pedagogic research. The purpose of ‘lateral traditional drawing (mainly still life and life drawing) thinking’ was to allow one to escape from fixed leading into the composition of painting with some perceptions and concepts in order to move sideways to find new ones’ (de Bono, 1973, p.74). Odling’s preoccupation with perception, optics, and scientific ...perception is not just the method seem concurrent with de Bono’s writing which positions and advocates for ‘lateral thinking’ as a way technical function of the eye... of rendering artistic thinking and perception that is not tied to the ‘mystique of personal talent’ (1973, p.73), emphasising that perception is not just the technical design and craft projects, the Section V course covered function of the eye but also a process of forming social the same subjects but had a distinctly different approach and cultural judgements. based on post-Bauhaus principles. Odling’s investment in ‘visual perception’ was If, as stated by G. James Daichendt, one of not to reaffirm its primacy and authority but instead the unifying pedagogical principles of the Bauhaus aimed to challenge the faculties of perception as a was the role of the ‘artist-teacher’ (Daichendt, 2010, means of understanding how experience may be p.157), then Odling’s Section V indicates a distinctive deconstructed, transposed, and communicated via pedagogical shift at GSA where we see the fruition of a other sensorial registers. De Bono’s ‘move sideways’ curriculum driven by individual research as opposed encapsulates much of the intention of Odling’s to being governed by the aesthetic conventions and teaching, but can also be used analogously as a traditions of a given discipline. The meticulous notes conceptual framework to explore the role of anecdote
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within both the New Wave research project and the Figure 3: Scoring the Archive collaborative endeavours that followed in the form of Workshop, Glasgow Sculpture Studios, 11 June 2016. Photograph by our Unknown Outcomes project. Kirsty Hendry. The interviews with former students who studied in Section V in 1968 and 1969 (once it became part of the two year general course) discuss Odling’s teaching and the range of knowledge they, as first year students, were encouraged to develop. Many of these personal recollections carefully recite the various steps and stages of each exercise and the different material encounters these exercises necessitated. Other former students focused on the affective dimensions of these tasks. One student in particular remembers feeling so shocked by this approach—the exercise having completely challenged their preconceptions of what they would/should be taught at art school—that they were reduced to tears. Another remembers thinking it was ‘bizarre’ at the time but on reflection, recognised how this specific exercise became fundamental to their practice as a graphic designer (Banerjee, 2015, of this official, authoritative space, challenging the Episode 2). These interviews not only revealed what positioning of ‘the archive’ as a fixed power structure. they could recall of their immediate responses to these The plurality and idiosyncratic nature of the anecdote specific tasks, but also demonstrate how the act of challenges the assumed validity of accounts authored recollection prompted them to consider as to how these by those with the power and agency to document and instructions and Odling’s transdisciplinary approach historicise their activities. impacted on their respective practices and personal If the official archive could be seen to offer a fixed development by introducing them to new ways of perspective, then the anecdote performs de Bono’s thinking, making, and doing. ‘move sideways’—introducing new perceptions focused on extra-informational qualities and experiential aspects, offering up new historical narratives that VOICING THE ARCHIVE fall beyond the capture of the official record. As the anecdote served as a strategy for articulating If, according to Derrida, ‘the archive’ embodies archival silences, offering alternative perceptions and reifies the experiences of dominant narratives on the accounts contained in the official record, the (Eichhorn, 2014, p.5), then the anecdotal could be qualities of ‘the anecdote’ also became the defining interpreted as that which pushes at the boundaries characteristic of the Unknown Outcomes project—
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finding a huge amount of overlap with the qualities of forms of knowledge to emerge, the full scope of the the anecdotal and the experiences garnered through workshop itself as a generative site for the production the workshops we ran using the archival material. If and circulation of knowledge and critical reflection we principally understand the anecdote as a linguistic only became fully evident during the evaluative act, then our workshops could be thought of as a interviews we enacted with our participants—as we multisensory iteration of these principles. Mike will go on to explore in more detail. Similar to the Michael’s concept of anecdote offers us a useful way of responses offered by the original Section V students, articulating this: ‘In terms of the topological, it brings it was interesting to see how quickly our contemporary together what might once have seemed distant and workshop participants were able to extrapolate their disconnected: past episodes that are marginal and experiences of the workshop, recontextualising them trivial illuminate contemporary moments of critical in relation to their current experiences and disciplin- reflection and reorientation’ (Michael, 2014, p. 33). ary learning environments at GSA. The tangible The workshops staged as part of Unknown material outputs from the workshop became conduits Outcomes became an embodied and performative through which our participants were able to articulate articulation of Michael’s anecdote. Providing an and excavate the different knowledges at play within epistemological break from the discursive research, the their experience of the exercise, a way of giving voice workshops allowed us to connect the informal and the to tacit activity. bureaucratic archival materials through thinking and As we touched upon earlier, the bureaucratic doing, encouraging experiential forms of knowing to be record of the research period omitted any reference developed and shared. In our interpretation of Odling’s to staff and student experience, but how does this original teachings, the aim of our activity became twofold; not only were participants exploring ideas of notation, scoring, sound, and image, but through ... the archive not as receptacle, the temporal disjuncture of the archival material, via 10 — Redux is typically understood redux,10 participants were also exploring the conditions but as the catalyst for new forms as that which is brought back, of the present moment in relation to these ideas. revived, or restored. In reference to creative works, redux acquires a According to Kate Eichhorn (2014, p.3), ‘rather of knowledge to emerge... slightly more specific meaning that than a destination for knowledges produced or a place acknowledges how the new context to recover histories and ideas placed under erasure, and circumstances in which the original work is presented impacts on the making of archives is frequently where knowledge reconcile with the current context of higher education, the meaning and interpretation of the production begins.’ In the spirit of this sentiment, which supposedly prioritises the ‘student experience’ work itself. we were interested to see what new insights and and ‘student voice’? The auto-distributive qualities of perspectives restaging these ways of thinking, making, the anecdote shift the positioning of our participants and doing with a group of contemporary practitioners from subjects of the archive to active agents within it. would generate. True to Eichhorn’s conception of the The process of gathering these anecdotal accounts from archive not as receptacle, but as the catalyst for new both former and current art school students offered
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a critical moment of reflection on the educational Figure 3: Workshop poster designed practices of our current moment. How might the by Jessica Taylor, September 2015t concept of the anecdote as embodied through the workshops offer a way of articulating these forces that invisibly condition the space of education?
PRACTICING THE ARCHIVE
The anecdotal recollections of past students provided us with information on their experiences, but only a glimpse of the forms of learning they actually underwent—forms of embodied, multisensory knowledge that can only be accrued through re- experiencing the exercises and projects of the period. We decided that the format of a participatory workshop that channelled the teaching methods of Section V would provide an embodied and performative form of engagement with the archival material and its contents. The collaborative and participatory nature of the workshop model provided a lens through which to explore John Danvers’s emphasis on the importance of learning through practice in Art and Design and the intrinsic relationships between learning, understanding, participation, and action. According to Danvers (2003, p. 51): ‘Within Art and Design participation is axiomatic to the process of learning through practice. In this participatory view of learning engagement, involvement and action are prerequisites for the development of understanding’. Danvers’s notion of learning through practice resonates with Jean knowledge production, but also a strategy for thinking Lave’s assertion that ‘knowledge always undergoes about the conditions of the forms of knowledge construction and transformation in use’ (Lave, 2009, production embedded in Odling’s pedagogic research. p.203). The notion of the transformative and generative In Learning from Experience (2004), Michael potential of ‘knowledge in use’ offers not only another Biggs also offers a deeper excavation of the different way of thinking about the archive as a space of knowledges embedded within this notion of practice-
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based learning. Biggs constructs a triangulation pedagogical research that deconstructed the supposed between forms of knowledge that are explicit mechanical aspects of perception to expose the cogn- (expressed linguistically), tacit (has an experiential itive and affective dimensions that produce ‘seeing’ as component that cannot be efficiently expressed an inherently subjective and value-laden act. Odling’s linguistically), and ineffable (cannot be expressed focus on deconstruction as a strategy for learning linguistically). These principles of experiential learning seems as cogent for his former students as it did for our become reified, exposed, and accentuated, not only contemporary Unknown Outcomes participants. Both by Odling’s multisensory approach to pedagogy but groups speak to how this practice of deconstruction also through the format of the workshop itself, which led them to question the implicit and fundamental is governed and shaped by a series of ‘exercises’— assumptions and value judgements they make within productive or focusing limitations, constraints, which their own practices and approaches. The range of are material, spatial, and temporal in nature. distinct and individualistic responses produced via the same task revealed and prompted discussion around the different ways of thinking present amongst the group, exposing and introducing participants to new ways of thinking that were not their own. The ‘exercise’ is distinctly and immediately recognisable as a space of learning—where knowledge is transferred and generated, where the sensation of learning is keenly felt. The explicit ‘makeup’ of the exercise as teaching mechanism in the form of rules, constraints, process, reflection, sharing, discussion, and outcome emphasise and reify the conditions and experiences of practice-based learning that can be hard for students to define and articulate due to its on-going and iterative nature. In the immediacy of the situation, the ‘exercise’ offers a finite structure through which to understand one’s practice, yet this structure also offers a way to identify and analyse the more ineffable qualities of learning in order to reclaim agency within them. The interviews also revealed that the participants in Unknown Outcomes located Figure 4: Still from Visual Perception In the context of our interpretation of the a particular value in the process-based nature of the Workshop, 8 September 2015. archival Section V exercises, Biggs’s conceptualisation exercises—that the workshops offered an exploratory Photograph by Debi Banerjee. of the different knowledges at play within practice- space that focused on process rather than outcomes. based learning echoed much of Odling’s own They equated their experience of the collaborative
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and participatory nature of the workshop to creating a outcome, but instead involved negotiating as a group sense of ‘lack of pressure’. They identified the focus of how to experiment within the limitations of the the exercise as productive, and indeed atypical to workshop. It was a structure that privileged questions much of their previous educational experiences as over answers, process over outcomes. it was not about producing a singularly authored It is ironic to note that the anti-foundational, self-reflective ideologies that permeate the later studio teaching at GSA began as experimentation on the Figure 6: 10 November 1965. Odling’s two-year general course, a programme that was by correspondence with Harry Barnes, definition foundational in intent. Our interviews with discussing a meeting with Swiss graphic designer Joseph Muller- our contemporary participants emphasise that these Brockman on a visit to Zurich School interplays of perceptions of freedom and constraint, of Arts and Crafts (Source: GSA ambiguity and explicitness, are still prevalent dis- Archives and Collections). courses within contemporary approaches to Art and Design education:
It’s funny that you say that in F&T [Fashion and Textiles] and in design in general there’s ‘a way of doing things’. It’s the opposite in Fine Art. There’s so much freedom—there’s too many options. It was so nice all sitting down, this is what we’re doing, these are the materials, this is the idea; now do it. (Participant 1, 2016).
Reflecting on the experience of our workshop, the student perspectives offer a very direct context through which to explore the nuance and intricacy implicated in the adoption of rules within creative practice. The structuring device of the workshop provoked the participants to reflect upon the different ways their education has been structured by both fine art and design pedagogical practices and both the implicit and explicit rules that govern and shape these experiences. The students’ reflections indicate that, within their disciplinary contexts, they navigate experiences of ambiguity, structure, and intention in different ways. The fine art student perspective in
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particular challenges assumptions that the freedom to of dépaysement—a sense of being taken out of one's do whatever you want as being inherently productive, element, or of égarement—the errant practice of articulating that so much freedom and seemingly straying from oneself’ (ibid.). unstructured open-endedness and ambiguity comes In education systems that tend to formally to form its own form of unproductive constraint. Not privilege and emphasise individual attainment, the only are these endless possibilities an overwhelming intervention of these activities within learning prospect, but these supposed freedoms also become environments is important as they hold open a space increasingly shaped by conditions and circumstances that students might not normally permit themselves. that are completely beyond the student’s control. This space offers a means of countering the affective symptoms of increasingly insular and solipsistic I’m not sure about this idea of ‘you’ll just get on approaches to developing one’s practice; which Cocker with it’ I don’t know who decided that and who describes as feelings of being lost, stuck, or of being decided it was productive. (Participant 1, 2016) unable to see away out or forward (2013, p.126). Here, different ways of thinking and making can be tested The students were quick to touch upon the and adopted as readily as they can be exhausted problems associated with the perception that play, and abandoned without the pressure to manifest it exploration, experimentation, were just supposed ‘to in material form or output to somehow merit it as happen’ and that the freedom to do so is assumed a productive. Cocker articulates the inherent paradox liberating enough catalyst for activity. In contrast, the located in the desirability of this sensation of ‘not opportunities for play and experimentation within knowing’—that whilst it feels prohibitive, paralyzing, the context of both our workshops and Odling’s and anxiety inducing, there is also a value to be placed original teachings were not assumed to be implicit on not knowing as being a generative position from or incidental, but rather purposefully designed, which to produce new or previously unexplored forms structured, and supported. of thinking, making, and doing. According to Emma Cocker, ‘[s]ubmission to the The Section V curriculum was based on set rules logic of a rule or instruction can operate as a device for and limitations designed to engender innovation and not knowing, as a way of surrendering responsibility, self directed experimentation within the constraints absolving oneself of agency or control within a practice of the exercise. The exercises, from what we can in order to be surprised’ (Cocker, 2013, p. 129). Cocker’s tell from the accounts, were informed by systems Tactics for Not Knowing: Preparing for the Unexpected, thinking—their role to provide a space for a student led offers an incredibly nuanced perspective on the role exploration of the potential of the set parameters and and potential of the rule. The rule is not about enfor- self-evaluation of the process. This seems potentially cing or prescribing a series of predetermined outcomes paradoxical; freedom and self-direction through but rather can be embraced as strategy for moving restriction? However, when viewed with the knowledge beyond oneself. She writes that ‘[f]ollowing in the of later developments it can be seen as a bridge footsteps of another can also create the conditions between the studio as a classroom and the studio as a
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free space where everything was permissible, a pivotal activities of Unknown Outcomes instigated by the New moment in the deconstruction of the pre-existing Wave research project has developed into an archive teacher/student roles. The teacher is no longer there in its own right. At the time of writing, the collection to lead the student to a correct position, but to create of fragments amassed over the course of our project a territory where the student can explore all possible includes research materials, YouTube videos, original positions. Cocker’s contemporary emphasis on the archival documents, writing, failed experiments, and teaching of thinking as a skill (again to counter the the outcomes produced during the workshops. sensations of feeling stuck, lost, or unable to move The Unknown Outcomes website (at http://www. forward) draws parallels with de Bono’s writing dealing unknownoutcomes.org/) was developed as a means with these same sensations which he defines as the to house this newly amassed collection of fragments need to escape from conditioned patterns and concept in a way that wouldn’t falsely impose a singular or prisons. He continues that ‘the escape is not to wallow authoritative narrative, but would instead embody in formless and self-indulgent chaos but to find new the fragmentary nature of our material, and the and better perceptions and then in time to move on processes of working with archival material itself. We from these again’ (de Bono, 1973, p.84). aimed to reflect the content of the archival material The forms of engagement with the research and embody the premise of Odling’s teaching. The and archival material that our workshops facilitated Section V material required that we acknowledge our thus became a way of avoiding our own ‘conditioned means of questioning, searching, and finding as highly patterns’ and ‘concept prisons’ in relation to the subjective value laden acts. In acknowledgement of archival research we were undertaking. The partic- this, the content of Unknown Outcomes is not tagged in ipatory, performative aspects of the workshops elicited any useful way—our taxonomy eschews the efficiency a space for more open-ended discussion, offering up of descriptions that ‘best’ reflect our content in favour other pathways, perceptions, and responses that we of descriptions that speak to the associative and could never have anticipated or predicted. Not only lateral connections we make when attempting to make did the workshops perform a pivotal role in project meaning, a literal and metaphorical ‘move sideways’ as a vehicle for sharing, activating, distributing from the official archival material, not a singular and disseminating the archival material, they also account but a constellation of contingent readings. became a way of sharing and distributing the creative, critical, and reflective responses to the material. Our participants were not merely responding to our archival research, but were actively authoring and contributing to it. These activities have generated, and continue to generate, more material relating to Odling and his research and teaching. True to Jacques Derrida’s notion that ‘archivization produces as much as it records the event’ (Derrida, 1995, p.17), the
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REFERENCES
Alexander, B. (2006). Excluding archival silences: Oral histories and historical absences. Archival Science, 6(1), 1-11.
Banerjee, D. (2015). New wave: Materials, methods and media, Glasgow School of Art 1970-1986 [audio podcast]. Retrieved 1 May 2016 from: https://itunes.apple. com/gb/podcast/new-wave-materials-methods/id1053100582?mt=2
Biggs, M. (2004). Learning from experience: Approaches to the experiential component of practice based research. Forskning, Reflektion, Utveckling, 2004, 6-21.
Cocker, E. (2013). Tactics for not knowing. In R. Fortnum & E. Fisher (Eds.), On not knowing: How artists think (pp.127-136 ). London: Black Dog Publishing.
Daichendt, G. (2010). The Bauhaus artist-teacher: Walter Gropius’s philosophy of art education. Teaching Artist Journal 8(3), 157-164.
Danvers, J. (2003). Towards a radical pedagogy: Provisional notes on learning and teaching in Art & Design. Journal of Art & Design Education, 22(1), 47-57.
De Bono, E. (1973) Lateral thinking and perception, in D. Warren Piper (Ed.), Readings in Art & Design education: 1 after Hornsey (pp. 72-84). London: Davis-Poynter Limited.
Derrida, J. (1995), Archive fever: A Freudian impression (E. Prenowitz, Trans.). Diacritics, Summer 1995, 25(2), 9-63.
Donaldson, D. (1978-1979). The Glasgow School of Art Prospectus 1978-1979. Archive reference: GSAA/REG/1 (1978-79) Box Reference: GSAA/REG/1 Loose Prospectuses 1968/69-1978/79
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Foster, H. (2004). An archival impulse. October, Fall 2004, 110, 3-22.
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Odling, N. (2011). Ted and Elizabeth Odling: Artists of the West of Scotland. Barnsley, Yorkshire: Walker Fine Arts.
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STUDIES IN MATERIAL THINKING ABOUT THE AUTHORS www.materialthinking.org
ISSN: 1177-6234 Debi Banerjee / Kirsty Hendry /
Glasgow School of Art / Glasgow School of Art Students’ Association / Auckland University of Technology [email protected] [email protected] First published in April 2007, Auckland, New Zealand. Copyright © Studies in Material Debi Banerjee was the Research Assistant for New Kirsty Hendry is currently Student Engagement Thinking and the author. Wave: Materials, Methods and Media, Glasgow School Co-ordinator at the GSA Students’ Association. Her All rights reserved. Apart from fair of Art 1970-1986 (2015). Research interests include role is focused on supporting the strong culture of dealing for the purposes of study, workshops and creative learning environments, student-led activity, working to create opportunities research, criticismor review, as participatory practice and the history of fine art and for students to develop their practices beyond permitted under the applicable copyright legislation, no part of design pedagogy. Debi has worked in visual arts the curriculum. In this capacity she is currently this work may be reproduced by any education for the Collective Gallery (Edinburgh), undertaking research into the significance of co- process without written permission Stills (Edinburgh) and the Edinburgh International curricular activity and student-led initiatives within from the publisher or author. For permissions and other inquiries, Festival. She works as Visiting Lecturer at Glasgow the context of Art and Design education. Kirsty also please contact the Editor: School of Art and is currently the Curator for Learning works as a practicing artist who produces writing,
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